Functional socialism

46 FUNCTIONAL SOCIALISM

(i) The final or supreme values are moral satisfaction, scientific discovery and artistic creation.

(ii) The instrumental value par excellence is man and his associations and institutions.

(ii) he instrumental values for the instrument man are those which may be called by the name of economic values: power, wealth, pleasure, etc.

With all possible emphasis, I assert that this is the only scale of values conceivable in a civilized society. The only alternatives, in greater or less degree, is the philosophy of the pig-trough. If only the two generations that knew Carlyle, Ruskin and William Morris had listened and understood! And so, as is the way of history, we return to our prophets, but with added experience, increased knowledge; with a new vision and a new psychology. And with our post-war achievement—the conquest of economic scarcity.

The question “to what end?” is now in a fair way to be answered. Imagine the functional authority confronted with this scale of values. What would be their response? They would probably start from the bottom and work upwards. They would say that, so far as the instrumental values were concerned, these came under their jurisdiction; that they could supply the community with all the material things envisaged in the third category, twice or three times as much to secure an ample exchange for imported goods and for the enrichment of the world. Incidentally they might remark that if other countries exchanged their goods on the same basis, war would

finally disappear.